


This Is How It Begins

by gnimaerd



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:30:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimaerd/pseuds/gnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time, Nyssa seeks Sara out in Nanda Parbat. This is how they begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How It Begins

The first time, Nyssa is the one who comes to her (Sara likes to remind her of this, occasionally, when they’re fighting - this was Nyssa’s fault.  _Nyssa started it_ ).

Late at night, in the deeps of Nanda Parbat, when Sara finds herself so exhausted that her body might as well be full of concrete, and her mind is up and chirping like the crickets outside her window, her door opens.

“You should be asleep,” Nyssa gazes in at her a moment, before stepping inside, her face half illuminated by the candle burning at Sara’s bedside. There’s sweat just barely visible at her hairline, and she’s wearing a tank top and those loose, linen pants that tie at the waist – training gear. Because of course Nyssa al-Ghul has been up hitting the gym at three in the freaking morning.

Still, Sara swallows a faint, nonsensical bloom of excitement at seeing her (god she’s a schoolkid with a crush). “My mind won’t switch off.”

“Poor little bird,” Nyssa murmurs.

She closes the door, crosses the room to sit on the edge of Sara’s mattress.

It’s a cell, really, this room – something a monk would once have occupied; the candle’s probably the most expensive thing in here. Small but cleaner than anywhere Sara’s lived since before the  _Queen’s Gambit_  went down, and warmer and dryer. She likes it. She feels safe here – doubly so with Nyssa sat by her knees, her long legs half crossed, a little ungainly, heels resting on the floor in front of her, her profile to Sara.

What’s she doing here? Sara wonders, a split second before Nyssa rests a hand on the nearest of Sara’s calves, gently running her fingers up toward the knee – and  _oh._

It’s not that Nyssa never touches her gently – she does it all the time, checking Sara for injuries after training, treating the ones she sustains – but this is different. The intention is different and the motion is less purposeful, more hesitant.

“You can’t sleep either, huh?” Sara asks, softly.

“I suppose not.”

Nyssa isn’t meeting her gaze, just quietly stroking Sara’s leg, waiting for… what, permission? Sara feels a shiver of something she hasn’t in a while, bites her lip.

She pushes herself up with her elbows, though her body wails objections at the movement – and struggles into a sitting position that brings her closer to Nyssa’s face. Then she ducks her head, leaning close enough to feel the other woman’s breath on her cheek. It takes a moment of gentle fumbling – Nyssa’s loose hair and the flickering shadows don’t help the exact logistics of mouths, noses, eyelashes, chins – but Sara touches her fingers to Nyssa’s jaw just insistently enough to make her turn her head, bring her _just, just_  in contact with Sara’s lips.

It could almost be platonic, that kiss. Almost.

(The next one definitely isn’t).

And just as she lets the tip of her tongue brush Nyssa’s, Nyssa stops her, puts her fingers over Sara’s mouth, drawing a breath that has the hint of a tremble in it.

“This,” Nyssa mutters, “is inconvenient.”

“Oh, gee, just what every girl wants to hear,” Sara snorts, dropping back onto her elbows.

“I’m – sorry,” a pause, Nyssa pushing her hair off her face. It’s an anxious gesture, Sara realises, which is weird because Nyssa al-Ghul doesn’t get nervous. Ever. “I shouldn’t want you. If my father finds out…”

“Is being into girls or – whatever – not a thing here?” Sara raises an eyebrow.

Nyssa shrugs, non-committally. “We are not meant to touch the junior members of the League. Not whilst they’re training.”

“Then why’d you come in here? Cause you still seem to be touching me.”

It’s true – Nyssa hasn’t taken her hand off Sara’s leg. And she smiles, ruefully. But she doesn’t withdraw her hand.

“I just want you to understand… what you might be involving yourself with,” Nyssa murmurs, “it would have to be kept secret. For now.”

This is not a booty call, Sara realises, it’s Nyssa offering her something else. Potentially something she has never, ever had before. And she isn’t sure how she feels about that, except that she would really like to have sex with this woman whose hand has crept up past her knee and is now rubbing little circles across her inner thigh. Is that enough, right now?

Yeah – yeah, it totally is.

“Okay,” she replies, softly, and catches the edge of Nyssa’s smile.

“Well then – darling, hush.”

She is swept into the sort of kiss that feels like it has a freight train coming up behind it, all power and push – more like the Nyssa she knows best, the warrior who rescued her from the streets of Hong Kong, who trains her every day, someone full of life and death and purpose. Sara brings her hands up to her face to steady herself, even as Nyssa wraps an arm around her waist, rakes another through her hair, cradling the back of her head, pressing her down onto the mattress. Her body is hot through the linen she’s wearing and Sara could swear she can feel every muscle in the other woman’s body working, lithe and firm and strong enough to kill her easily, instantly.

(Kind of a turn on).

She can’t breathe especially well but she doesn’t care, tugging Nyssa closer, gasping around her mouth.

They get the blanket out from in between the lower halves of their bodies in a haphazard flail of limbs and feet, and Nyssa is already making short work of the t-shirt Sara sleeps in, the hand that was on her thigh is now on her ribs and it feels so good it sends goosebumps up the back of her neck. She mumbles something appreciative into Nyssa’s neck, and Nyssa gently places a hand over her mouth.

“Shh.”

“Mm?” Sara pushes the hand away, half giggling, adrenalin hot in her veins and making her giddy, “Nyssa – ”

“I mean it,” Nyssa whispers, “you know how sound carries in this place. We will be very easily overheard and if we are my father will make sure to separate us. Do you understand?”

Sara’s pretty sure that ‘separate’ is a euphemism. She nods.

Nyssa kisses her again, murmurs into her ear. “Good. Now not a sound.”

That part isn’t easy.

That Nyssa has broken open skulls with the fingers that are now exploring parts of her that would be much easier to break than bones doesn’t change how good it feels. This hasn’t happened in too long and the tension of its release is almost palpable as Sara gasps, bites back a moan, her shoulders arching off the mattress as Nyssa presses further, presses in. Sara mouths  _fuck_  a few times at the ceiling for good measure, has to hold in a sob of pure, white hot joy.

Her whole body clenches and releases and clenches again – she’s too tired to control her breathing and everything aches and it’s beautiful because Nyssa is biting at one of her ears and holding her close.

This is exhausting and Sara doesn’t care. This is dangerous and she doesn’t care. If she reaches, works a hand between them and feels for where Nyssa is unsubtly pressing against her hip bone, she can feel exactly how much this woman wants her and that feels good, too. She’d forgotten how good it feels, to be wanted.

The knot in those linen pants of Nyssa’s proves stubborn, though – damnit, she’s going to have to push her up and look –

Nyssa grasps her wrist, tugs it away and then pushes both Sara’s hands up over her head. “Another time,” she murmurs it into Sara’s ear. “Just you for now, alright?”

Sara nods, vigorously. Nyssa’s grin is sharp and predatory – she goes back to gentlydrawing her teeth over Sara’s throat, her fingers on the move again.

Sara whimpers because she’s tired almost to the point where she doesn’t want to move, but God if Nyssa stops she’ll die. It feels so good she could weep – after everything, Nyssa’s so gentle, so soft, so warm –

“Shh,” Nyssa hushes her again, and then covers her mouth with her own for good measure. That feels good too. Sara reaches to pull Nyssa closer, craving the contact.

Friction is a wonderful thing, she thinks, as she lifts her hips against the blunt edge of Nyssa’s palm. She’s close enough to the edge that she’s shaking, though the room stays eerily quiet – just the scrape and rustle of flesh and fabric, an obscene, moist sort of sound and the crickets outside. Sara shudders another breath and buries her face in Nyssa’s shoulder, muffling another moan, blindly fisting a hand in her shirt.

(In the morning she’ll spot the bruises her fingertips have left on Nyssa’s right shoulder blade – coincidentally the first mark she’s ever put on her).

And Sara – coincidentally – has only had sex with a woman once before and that was four years and at least two lifetimes ago and was mostly a stupid, drunken adventure she told herself ‘didn’t count’ afterward – but this feels absolutely like fucking. Not the way it does with a man but still, there’s no other word for it. Nyssa is whispering to her in Arabic (Sara knows half the words and can’t identify the others but doesn’t care – doesn’t care – as Nyssa presses down with her thumb), and smoothing the crown of Sara’s head with the hand not currently wedged between them and it’s all obscenely, absurdly intimate.

The only sound she makes at that moment is a sharp, indrawn breath that is the start of a rippling mewl that Nyssa silences with another kiss, deep and lingering, as Sara arches and curls against her. Everything goes starry, just for a moment, boiling black glitter on the edges of her vision, and then she comes down in a shivering, aching mess.

Nyssa is still stroking her hair.

They do this three times in the next week and by the end of it Sara is getting a dangerous fondness for the taste of Nyssa’s mouth and the way her sweat smells on her neck in the mornings. But it isn’t until their first job together, when they find themselves with a hotel suit to trash and two days to kill, that Sara gets to push Nyssa onto the nearest soft furnishing and have her own way –

Nyssa is totally and adorably unable to have a quiet orgasm, is the immediately obvious reason why she keeps refusing to let Sara into her pants at night. Still, there are worse incentives for training harder, being allowed out of the city more often.

Sara spends sometime after with her in that hotel room, in amongst their underwear and faintly medieval looking weaponry and 1000 thread count sheets and several broken bits of furniture, wrapped around her international assassin girlfriend (girlfriend? Girlfriend.) gleefully teasing Nyssa about how she’s finally found the thing about which she has better self control.

Which is of course a terrible mistake because Nyssa takes it as a challenge.

(Well – less a mistake more the best.fun.ever even if it leaves Sara more physically wrecked than the job did).

This is how it begins: in soft, quiet pools stolen late at night, or in patches of warmth snatched in the midst of those blood-soaked days outside of Nanda Parbat. How it grows and twists into its own raging, bloody storm is another story, but those easy moments in between are still Sara’s favourite parts. 


End file.
